New Year's Day: The 150th Anniversary Of The Signing Of The Emancipation Proclamation

December 30, 2012|By DAVID DRURY, Special to The Courant, The Hartford Courant

Less than two weeks after tolling in remembrance of young lives lost to senseless tragedy, church bells across Connecticut will sound a different emotional chord on New Year's Day.

They will ring out in jubilation.

One hundred and fifty years earlier, on Jan. 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, which proclaimed that more than 3 million slaves in Confederate-held territory "shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

A ceremony at the state Capitol will mark the event, with a noontime bell-ringing joined by churches and towns.

"We addressed letters to 169 towns and cities to ring bells if they can, and addressed all major churches and asked them to do it, also,'' explained Alfred L. Marder, chairman of the Connecticut Freedom Trail Committee and president of the Amistad Committee, which, along with the African-American Affairs Commission and the secretary of the state are sponsoring the Capitol observance.

"We are hoping those that don't have bells will have some commemoration,'' he said. "The point is that [the proclamation] was extremely important in our history and changed the nature of the struggle.''

"We'll be ringing the bell here. We don't have the greatest bell, but we certainly plan to ring it,'' said the Rev. Richard H. Huleatt, pastor of First Church in Windsor, at 382 years the oldest Congregational church in the state.

Unlike the tolling in memory of the Newtown victims, "this is a little more joyful,'' Huleatt said.

As viewers of Steven Spielberg's new film, "Lincoln," were reminded, the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the U.S. That was left to the adoption of the 13th Amendment two years later. But the proclamation marked a significant milestone along that path. It redefined the Civil War from a fight to reconstitute a flawed Union to something greater.

"Now, for the first time in its history, the Government stands unequivocally committed to the support of the fundamental principals on which it was originally founded,'' observed the Hartford Daily Courant on Jan. 2, 1863.

In practical terms, the proclamation weakened the enemy by depriving the manpower-strapped Confederacy of the forced labor upon which its economy depended. It cleared the way for blacks to serve in the Union's armed forces and largely extinguished Southern hopes for European recognition and support.

The Capitol ceremony will feature a performance by the Mass Choir, under the direction of Wayne Dixon, and a keynote address by state Sen. Toni Harp, D-New Haven. Student winners from the statewide Emancipation Proclamation poetry competition, "What Freedom Means to Me," will be read.

The ringing of the Connecticut Liberty Bell will conclude the ceremony, which is free and open to the public. Capitol doors will open at 10:15 a.m.

In Norwich, where a 100-gun salute on Jan. 2, 1863, marked the state's first official acknowledgement of the Emancipation Proclamation, the 250-pound Freedom Bell cast in June will be rung at noon outside city hall. A commemorative 100-gun cannon salute at the city's harbor park is scheduled for 1:10 p.m. Activities will conclude with an afternoon program at Norwich Free Academy.

Emancipation Proclamation-themed programs and exhibits will continue through January.

Russell Library in Middletown has a 150th anniversary program planned for 6 p.m. on Jan. 10. A panel discussion, "Myths and Legends of the Emancipation Proclamation,'' will be held at the Old State House in Hartford from noon to 1 p.m. on Jan. 16; the Amistad Center for Art and Culture at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art will celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Jan. 21.

An Amistad Center exhibit devoted to the proclamation, "Emancipation!" will open May 18 and continue through Sept. 15.